Posts Tagged ‘Poetic Image’

Alex and I are in Alcobendas, Madrid, this week for the opening of his exhibition, “Selecciones: 1975-2004,” which was the result of his winning the Premio Internacional de Fotographia Alcobendas last year. For our friends in Spain, hope you can help us celebrate Alex’s opening at the Centro de Arte Alcobendas at 7:30 pm on Thursday, May 12th.

For the TWO VIEWS column this month, below is another one of my rough, homemade videos of our curating a wall of the exhibition this afternoon, even though we were somewhat jetlagged from a night flight from New York (Talk about intuitive editing!). And secondly, above you’ll find a rather mysterious image of Alex’s from his Alcobendas exhibition — and one that’s also in his new book — that was taken in Ft. Sherman, Panama, in 1999, a photograph of a U.S. military jungle warfare training camp.

Lastly, I’d like to leave you with a quote I came across this evening from one of my favorite poets, the Spanish poet Lorca, a quote which seems a fitting end to our first day in Madrid: “Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.”–Rebecca Norris Webb

This month, we’re featuring TWO LINKS about Bruce Davidson and his exhibitions in New York, TWO QUOTES about poetry and photography, and a celebratory TWO VIEWS. –– Alex and Rebecca

Bruce Davidson, Sicily, 1961

TWO LINKS: BRUCE DAVIDSON

I first encountered Bruce Davidson’s work in an issue of Popular Photograph’s Annual in the late 1960’s, an issue that my father, a serious amateur (and occasionally professional) photographer urged on me. My recollection is that the magazine published some of Bruce’s England and Wales project. Whether it ran one of my favorites of Bruce’s photographs from Sicily (above), a wonderfully spontaneous and lyrical photograph, I don’t recall.

Having been captivated by the Davidson of immediacy, of spontaneity, of grain and occasional blur, I was startled, some years later, to experience the stillness of his East 100th Street work: large format portraits. I didn’t get it right away. As the years have passed, however, I’ve come to appreciate the rich and varied poetry of Bruce’s expansive body of work. He is a photographer’s photographer, in love with the medium itself: a master of grain, of the moment, and of those impeccable textures that only the larger format can give. He seems to have worked seamlessly in all formats: equally comfortable with the immediacy of the street and the still confrontation of the portrait.

He has two exhibitions up right now in NY that reflect his remarkable photographic range, one at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, one at the Bruce Wolkowitz Gallery. Here are two links to articles about Bruce and his work, one by Randy Kennedy in The New York Times, and the other by Philip Gefter in The Daily Beast, author of Photography After Frank.––Alex Webb

The photographer and writer Wright Morris once wrote, “I do not give up the camera eye when writing –– merely the camera.” Originally a poet and now a photographer, I would say the reverse is also true: “I do not give up the poetic eye with photographing –– merely the pen.”

To see the close relationship between these two sister arts, one only has to look at the root of the word “photography,” which literally means “writing with light.” Both photography and poetry share a preoccupation with light and time and the elusive moment, so fleeting that one of the few ways to try to grasp it is to hold a book of poetry or photography in one’s hands.

What do people mean when they talk about “the poetic image” in photography? The two Bruce Davidson photographs above (the first one, one of Alex’s favorites, the second, one of mine) certainly come to mind.

Well, to start to answer this complicated question, one that I will probably revisit from time to time on this blog, I thought I should turn to two poets: Charles Wright and Charles Simic, former poet laureate of the U.S, who originally was a painter. Their definitions of poetry rely on two distinct images that are resonant and multiplicitous and evocative –– yet another definition of the poetic image.––Rebecca Norris Webb

Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley. –– Charles Simic

Poetry is the shadow of the dog –– the dog is out there ever on the move. ––Charles Wright

TWO VIEWS: TENTH ANNIVERSARY

When Rebecca and I decided to get married in 1999, we opted for hand-made wedding invitations. When I looked through my work for the right photograph, this one sprang to mind, and Rebecca agreed wholeheartedly, since it’s also one of her favorites. Now, ten years later, I still associate this image with our wedding day, the best day of my life.––Alex Webb

Alex Webb, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 1996

Sometimes a poem arrives whole. This poem is one of those rare birds. It was sparked by an event Alex and I witnessed walking home late one evening from a movie through our Brooklyn neighborhood. We saw a stranger sitting on his stoop, and he said in a quiet voice, barely above a whisper, as if he were sharing a secret: “Do you want to see Saturn?”

Alex and I quickly exchanged glances, and before we knew it, we were both kneeling on the sidewalk peering through this stranger’s telescope. Neither of us, we realized, had ever actually seen the sixth and largest planet. Alex, always the gentleman, let me look first. The next morning, I wrote down what happened. This poem is for Alex, in honor of our10th wedding anniversary.––Rebecca Norris Webb